hello, new folks

This is a very quiet corner of the internet. Welcome to…spring? Are we in spring? I think so. In my corner of the planet, the lilacs are out, the roses are out, the…well, everything’s out, except the jacaranda. They’ll be out in a couple of weeks. It’s also raining like winter, so who knows.

I do not love spring, not because I’m a flower-hater–flowers are fine!–but because it’s spring quarter, the time of student apathy and exhaustion, which coincides with the time of instructor apath–er, burnout. We call it burnout. The quarter system is a plague. I hate it. I have taught in it for going on 19 years, and while I am used to it, I still loathe it. See, teaching is, for me–or has been, in times past–the place where I derive some professional joy. Like OK! Publishing is hard, writing is hard, but at least I have proof-positive I’m a good instructor! My students give me life!

…they are not giving me life right now. Most of this year, actually. Winter quarter was the best crop I’ve had for years, but fall and spring are so quiet it’s like teaching during the pandemic again, when we were all on Zoom and the students might have a camera on and might be in frame but the mics were muted and it was mostly me talking to myself and blank faces. At least in Zoom, a question might get an answer in the chat window. Now I just get stared at. I’d say it’s demoralizing except I’m too tired to get that upset, last two paragraphs notwithstanding. (I have some very smart, excellent, observant students who are working hard, they just won’t talk. And I have a couple who will talk but only because the clock in our classroom is loud and it makes them flinch in the awkward silences before I do.)

Anyway, a long way of saying it’s been quiet here because I’m spending all my energy on students. Also, I don’t have energy to spare, because the world right now is a fucking mess. There is this clown car of absurdity administration, for whom cruelty seems to be the point, and for whom the McCarthyism appears to be inspiration. Gross. Then we have this tech-bro dystopia going on, hi, generative AI, how are ya? which is being embraced by people who should know better in institutions that should know better. (Maybe it’s okay for STEM stuff? I don’t know. But it’s not good for the stuff I teach. The writing is beige, and the analysis is either wrong or ant-wading-pool shallow. Let’s leave aside the climate impacts and the fact that it’s uncompensated labor/theft and some of my books are part of the Meta-thefts and if I let myself think about that I get unhealthily angry.)

So the future is more uncertain than usual, and that wreaks havoc on my creative productivity. I am writing…slooooowly…while my agent tries to sell The Last Manuscript, which is also going slooooowly. (Everything’s glacial except the actual glaciers; they’re melting pretty quick.)

But I’ve made a thing!

I made this for my mother’s 80th. It’s the Dazzling Dominos pattern in hand-dyed 100% silk. The photo is rubbish and doesn’t do justice to the sheen. Silk is lovely and it took the color well (I ended up double-dyeing it to really get deep pinks). Silk is also slippery and a pain in the butt to work with. Not sure I’ll seek it out unblended again.

The other major stressor has been Murdercat. We had an unseasonably hot spring, and he and the Patchwork Terror both blew their double coats in record time. I expected hairballs from both of them, and was not disappointed. (Horrified, maybe.) That much fur wreaks havoc on the digestive system. Murdercat is a far more conscientious groomer, and deals a little less well with gut-fur. He kept throwing up, and then eating less, and then eating even less. But things were moving through, so… The vet suggested maybe his mouth hurt because he hadn’t had a dental in years and the tartar was pretty visible, so we did that, along with bloodwork because he’s 9.5. Teeth were great! Nothing wrong! But he took over 48 hours to come down off the anesthetic, and when he did he…wouldn’t eat. He’d try. He’d crouch down over his bowl, take 10 seconds of nibbling, and sit back up and do the I am nauseous lip-licking. He wanted to eat. But.

The lab also found crystals in his kidneys, though not his urine, so the vet wanted him eating wet only (which is the norm). They recommended fancy-ass expensive food. Except, see above, not really eating.

So two rounds of anti-emetics and a course of appetite-stimulant later, he’s eating, though still not the wet food pâté he’s eaten his whole adult life. I haven’t invested in the fancy food, because it’s also pâté, and his objection at the moment seems to be texture. If I had to anthropomorphize and guess–he associates feeling like shit with bowls of his wet food, so no thank you. I subscribe to the school of “a cat needs to eat more than a cat needs to eat a particular thing” so he’s getting a mix of kibble and non-pâté wet foods, and we’ll figure out special diets later, if ever.

The Patchwork Terror, of course, is fine. He doesn’t care. Vomit? Hairball? Whatever. When’s dinner? He’ll eat whatever’s in front of him, and whatever’s in front of anyone else if they’re too slow. He gained, like, 1.5 lbs during Murdercat’s hunger strike. That will probably come off pretty quick now, though he’s bitter that he’s not getting to scavenge as much. You see how he suffers.